


Falling, A Phanfiction

by mychemicalliteratureclub



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Drowning, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 01:43:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14274219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mychemicalliteratureclub/pseuds/mychemicalliteratureclub
Summary: Phil remembers Dan's death, and goes on a trip through his memory.





	Falling, A Phanfiction

No one ever runs away. Death has a familiar face. Death comes in the form of someone close to us, someone we know. Someone we love.

It was a frosty winter night, in the small village overlooking an old reservoir lake. Phil stood on the balcony of his bungalow, looking out across the invisible, icy water

He loved stargazing at night. It connected with some intrinsic part of him, that part that found the romance in every living moment, the beauty in every smile. He felt that the weeks, months, years that grief and hurt had stolen from him were in part being replaced by these hours of solitude, of remembrance that the night sky gave him. It was late, though, and he felt that he owed it to his worsening health to try and catch a few hours of the sleep he had missed so much of. He slid open his balcony door and walked back inside, into his ensuite. He switched on the bright yellow light, and watched himself flinch in the mirror, his pupils dilating rapidly to adapt from the outside darkness. His reflection never seemed tired late at night, however worn and lined his lined face might be. He reached for his comb, ran it through his still dark hair, enjoying the catch, the resistance of the teeth on his pale scalp. He looked down and brushed a strand of grey from his comb. He’d been finding the grey hairs more recently, as though the cold lake’s wind had blown them into him, chilling him, reminding of his mortality.

It was past midnight, and he’d given the night up already, called sleeping off as a bad idea. Dan would have teased him. Dan was the night owl, not him, although they both knew what it was to let the late hours breathe into the dawn, browsing the internet in darkness until the morning leaked onto the carpet beneath their drawn curtains. He couldn’t remember how many nights he’d spent with Dan in this way, side by side in mutual warmth and a silent happiness. The way that he would lose concentration on his screen, and become gradually aware of Dan’s breathing, the warmth of his shoulder pressed comfortingly on his. With Dan. With Dan. He’d do best to stop remembering, to stop recalling their past together. To stop recalling Dan’s death.

It had been late at night, at a party, when it happened. A wedding party, out in the country. They’d both been drunk, Dan a little more drunk than usual, with sparkling eyes, and a husky voice, and that infectious, childish enthusiasm of his. The main ceremony had been over a while ago, and the guests were almost finished their dinner when Dan had appeared, whispering in his ear.

“Phil. Phil!” he gestured, his warm breath intimately close, tingling the hairs on his neck. “Phil, let’s go swimming.” There was an flooded quarry nearby, Phil knew that much from the drive over. A short walk away, down an old bush track. It was full of mining debris, and fed by the country streams and autumn rains. Dangerous and deep and beautiful. He should never have agreed.

They took the walk slowly, as the yellow lights of the party faded behind them, nostalgic music lost in the hum of the breeze and the fluttering of night birds. It was dark, and the bush was dappled grey and silver with the moonlight. They had gone quite a way, in friendly silence before Phil tripped. He didn’t see the root at first, took it for the shadow of an overhanging branch, and then suddenly his foot was caught, and his footing was lost and flailing. He saw the look of surprise on Dan’s face, grazed his hand on the bark of a rough sapling, and then he was on the ground, breathless, with a bruised side and a flaming pain in his ankle. Dan was kneeling beside him almost instantly, holding him.

“Phil, you goose,” he said softly, instantly sober and concerned for his friend. “I will never lose faith in your ability to trip over anything. Where does it hurt?”

Phil grinned weakly, made a small grimace of pain. “I think I’ve sprained my ankle a little bit. I’ll be fine, Dan. Here, help me up,” he said, looping his arms around Dan’s neck, rumpling the formal collar. Dan grasped his waist, and pulled him up into a standing position, and Phil stood leaning against him momentarily, lost in the scent of his cologne and his hair, the smooth waves of their entangled hair. All too aware of the lack of space between their bodies. He felt himself drawing nearer, and stopped. Repressed memories. Stepped back, and looked up into the silky brown infinity of Dan’s eyes, where the flicker of recognition of the moment they had nearly had was fading like ripples in a murky pond.

“So,” said Dan, his dimpled smile breaking the tension between them. “Still up for a dip? It’s a little bit cold, but it’ll sober us up some. Maybe… make you a little less nostalgic.” he finished teasingly.

“Dannnn…” Phil said, pulling on his fringe to hide his embarrassment. “I don’t know. I mean, it’s practically a recipe for disaster. You know? Being out here, no-one knowing where we are?” he hesitated a moment, thinking it over. “In fact, you know what I’m fine. It’s going to be fun. We don’t have enough time together as it is. Schedules and rehearsals and planning. Its taking the life out of both of us.”

Dan had heard the uncertainty in his voice, though, knew Phil well enough to know when he was worried.

“Phil, we can head back,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with if your foot hurts badly. Besides,” he smirked, the skin around his eyes crinkling and it hurt, physically hurt Phil to watch him be that cute. “the fact that we will have gone off into the bush for 10 minutes and returned with crumpled shirts and sweaty hair makes us look like adventurers.”

“Dan.” Phil sighed, but he couldn’t help smiling as Dan raised his eyebrows knowingly.

“Not your kind of adventure? Cause I remember when it used to be.”

They’d decided to go, eventually, and set off again, Phil limping a little, but trying to hide it, avoiding the necessity of his arm around Dan’s shoulder. Their dress shoes made deep imprints in the damp carpet of eucalyptus leaves, and it was warm, the air swishing comfortably through the trees. A wonderful night for a swim. They reached the edge of the cliff suddenly, the vast expanse of water opening up before them, and Phil was struck by how large and horribly empty and deep it was. It was warm, but the wind was blowing a little harder, and he felt a shiver chilling him all the way through and up his spine.

Dan was taking off his clothes already, unbuttoning his jacket, unfastening his loose formal tie. Phil took a moment to disengage himself from the view, before following suit, talking as he untied his shoes.

“It’s so grand, and a little bit scary at the same time,” he told Dan. “It’s like, I wouldn’t expect to see the ocean here, surrounded by all that forest, but it seems so much bigger, and deeper than any ocean could be because of everything around it.”

Dan took a moment to reply. He seemed lost in thought, and a little sad, disconnected from his buoyantly cheerful intoxicated self.

“It reminds me of you, Phil,” he finally looking at him with that intent but gentle gaze that always made him feel uncomfortable, reminded him of how quickly he had fallen in love. “It seems like I’ve always just taken you for granted, like we do the ocean. But you’re so much deeper than that. There’s so much that I- I just can’t.” He broke off, turned it into a laugh, looked away. Looked back. “I’m serious, though.” He peeled off his trousers, socks, and folded them onto a rocky shelf at the edge of cliff. He was down to his boxers, and Phil was definitely distracted, having trouble undressing himself. Dan laughed, pushing his hair back across his forehead. “Phil, if you look any harder, your eyes are going to fall out. I’m serious about that, too. Now, watch me go.” and he jumped.

Phil’s heart was as weightless as Dan’s twisting, turning body, white and fragile and laughing as he fell motionless through the air, down, down into the dark blue water, where the splash of his body against the water resounded against the cliff walls, echoing mercilessly and filling the valley. Phil peered over the edge, shirt still on, half unbuttoned, eyes wide with panic. “Dan!” he yelled. “Daniel JAMES Howell you did not have the right to scare me like that. Dan! Where are you?” There was a moment of silence, while he tried to find the spot on the black and blue water where Dan had landed. And suddenly Dan’s head appeared, small from up here, his curls already prominent and his hair dark and wet against his pale face.

“Aaaahhhh!” he shouted, head back and smiling uncontrollably as he trod water. “It’s soo cold! Phil, you have to come down. You have to! I did, now you have to. It’s not that cold, I promise!”

“Dan, you… silly person,” Phil called down, smiling to hide his relief. “You have no idea how much you just freaked me out. And of course I’m coming. Just when I’m ready!”

Dan groaned, still smiling. “Phil, you’re never ready. You always do this.” he complained, still bobbing up and down, restless and grinning. Phil finished undressing, stood shivering slightly on the edge of the cliff. He thought about counting, then didn’t. Didn’t want to delay, standing up on top of the jump like so many times before, when Dan had been understanding about it while he felt like a coward. He gathered himself up, and flung himself out from the edge, arms held out into the wind, and keeping his eyes fixed on Dan’s expectant face below him.

The water hit him like a brick, and the air was forced from his lungs, evaporating in a cloud of bubbles. He opened his eyes cautiously, felt the chill of the lake on his eyeballs. He was deep in a column of foaming white, slowly clearing away, being replaced with the translucent glimmering emptiness of the deep, moonlit quarry. And then he realised that he hadn’t breathed for half a minute, and kicked quickly to the surface, breaking the stillness around him, and gasping noisily.

When he’d cleared the water dripping from his eyes, Phil looked around. Couldn’t see Dan. Span all the way around, looking for him, and was starting to feel the familiar panic rising up from his stomach, when he felt a grip on his foot. Dan always did this, and it never failed to scare him momentarily. The grip trailed all the way up his leg, slowly and casually, before Dan’s head broke the surface, grinning devilishly and dripping and curly. He enveloped Phil in a hug, and he didn’t pull away, because Dan’s body was warm and protective and close, shielding him from the cold currents of water that whistled around them. That moment would remain in his memory forever. He never failed to turn to it when he was having a hard day. The two of them, pale on pale, treading water, locked in each others arms, forgetting about the outside world, about their complications, about life for the moment. Focussing on what mattered. The faint smell of tea tree carried on the breeze, the rich, natural dark brown of the glassy waters around them. The cold that swirled in his limbs, bringing out goosebumps on his arms, and the pinpricks of moisture in his eyes, from emotion or the wind he couldn’t tell. And then they broke apart, and there was the sudden knowledge that the moment was over. That it couldn’t be that way forever. Phil’s legs were aching slightly with the feeling of being overworked, his lack of exercise telling. Silently, without any exchange, they headed for the shore, companionable in the quiet. They’d known each other for so long, they didn’t need to talk to know what they were each thinking. Phil felt the bottom first, started wading through the water instead of his lazy breaststroke. A fine layer of settled mud, brown silt caressed his toes, and parted above a solid, smooth limestone bottom. It was too smooth to be entirely natural. Must have been levelled by the mining here sometime in the last century. Probably before he was born, he was reflecting, when Dan interrupted him, pointing at the horizon.

“It’s nearly morning, Phil,” he was saying, indicating the pale glow of yellow above the hills and the forest, blending to a greyish blue as it faded into the night sky. “The wedding will be over by now. You up for the journey back to Sydney?” Phil could hear the exhaustion in his voice, the small tremor, as the cold set in and alcohol wore off.

“Of course, Dan,” he replied, shivering a little himself with the chilly morning air. “We can play I spy. You’d like that wouldn’t you? More hours of I spy with me?”

“You heartless monster,” Dan groaned. “One of these days, you’re going to break me, Phil. You actually are.” His grin suddenly dropped, as if he was trying to hide a bitterness inside him. Phil noticed his change, as he always did.

“Dan? Dan, what’s wrong?” Dan’s face was turned away, and as it turned back he saw a glint of emotion, a sheen of quick moisture over his deep brown eyes. His face was set in a sardonic grin, tight and constricted. He might have been on the verge of tears, but Dan was good at holding back tears. He’d had too much practice.

“I said that you’re going to break me,” Dan said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I wasn’t being serious. But I’d forgotten. You already have. I love you, Phil. You complete me, Phil Michael Lester, and yet you can’t. You won’t.”

Phil stopped, and he felt Dan’s hand slide out of his, the slackening of his grip as he waded on without him through the waist deep water the same colour as his eyes, without waiting for a response. He couldn’t think of a way to answer without bringing up the hard feelings he’d been hoping wouldn’t rise to the surface again, and pollute their relationship. Couldn’t think of a way to answer. Still couldn’t when Dan disappeared.

There was a moment when time seemed to stand still. The breeze stopped, the slowly waving treetops in the distance stopped. The scattered wisps of clouds flying at unimaginable speeds through the atmosphere ceased, were motionless. Dan’s neck was what remained most vividly in his memory. Pale pink and flushed, flecked with drops of water, dripping softly onto his back. The dark tail of curled wet hair that traced a delicate pattern on his nape. The pale blue of the veins beneath his opaquely pink-white skin. And suddenly his concentration was wrested away, and Dan was falling. He never thought for a second that he was diving in, ducking under. The movement was too swift, too uncontrolled to be intentional. It was violent and terrifying and abstracted. He didn’t relate it to reality. Dan’s rushed intake of breath as he dropped through the water, the slow crumbling movement as of a constellation far away that accompanied the hiss of the ripples parting beneath him. The sense of weightlessness within and without Phil’s mind that stopped him from moving, stopped him from comprehending in the least, that this was the last time he would ever see that back, those tangled curls, run his eyes over the faint freckles spotting Dan’s shoulders. The last time he would ever. The last time. The last.

He could still remember breaking out of his paralysis, and running toward where he’d seen Dan’s head disappear in a swirl of whispering wet hair. The cold iciness of the water near the bottom, hanging like an anxious cloud. The dust parting, and the water clearing enough for him to make out the circular hole of an abandoned mine shaft in the dull rock, distorted and wavy through the murky water. Gaping like a mouth. A constricting horrible mouth that had just swallowed his best friend. He had looked around for anything, anything to lower down into it, to help him. For his phone, for his presence of mind, for somebody to help him. He had started to lower himself down into the pit, out of sheer blinding panic. Nearly killed himself, got his knee stuck in a crevice in the sharp rock, and dragged himself out through sheer adrenaline, lungs soaked in dirty water when he’d panicked and started to run out of breath. He’d stood up as soon as he stopped coughing and screamed at the water, screamed himself hoarse and broken and weeping until Dan’s name seemed to echo from the scudding clouds above them.

Then he pulled himself, still limping, to shore, and sat huddled, nursing his freely bleeding knee. He knew that a person could survive without oxygen for six minutes. What was he doing? His friend, his lover, the person the meant the most anybody had ever meant to him was down there, alive. Separated from him by metres and metres of stultifying water and solid rock. Ears bleeding from the pressure, choking in water, slowly falling into insensibility. Terrified. He screamed again, and the pain he created in his throat seemed to give him a sort of reckless pleasure, or respite. He stopped, because the realisation of that masochistic enjoyment was scaring him. The dawn continued to progress, flickering palely through the trees behind him.

Phil sat there, tears falling lazily on his wet cheeks for he knew not how long. The rapid bleeding from his knee slowed, then stopped, and started to dry as the sun came out, sparkling and beautiful, filling up the lake with molten gold. It was darkening and starting to clot as the sun reached its zenith, and Phil, inexplicably began to shiver in the midday heat, though his body had long dried, and his skin was starting to redden with sunburn. That’s where they had found him, the rescue party, shouting and gesturing, and wrapping him in a blanket and asking him questions he felt too numb to answer.

He didn’t remember much after this. Hadn’t gone to Dan’s funeral, with the empty coffin and the thousands of mourners lining the streets of the small town Dan had grown up in. Hadn’t felt up to it. Hadn’t done a lot of things that he might’ve. Closing Dan’s channel, using the passwords that they’d both shared with each other, had felt cathartic. It seemed to give him some semblance of ending, letting go. Breaking the ties with the man who’d disappeared from his life, and beneath the waters of the lake. Acknowledging his end. It had never worked. He still kept the videos, the rough drafts, the cutscenes. Their photos together. Still spent hours, days even, just poring over them, and living for the sparkle in Dan’s eyes that he missed so much, for the dimples and the slightly crooked teeth and the wry grin. He spent a while sleeping in Dan’s bed, and trying to absorb his scent. The warmth that seemed to fade with every hour that he let his life fall away from him. It took him a while to realise what he actually needed, what he’d spend each second of every minute wishing for.

“Goodbye,” he whispered to the tattered polaroid, and he let it slip between his fingers, fluttering down onto the carpet. “I miss you, Dan. And I’m sorry. You know I am. I shouldn’t have let you leave, and it’s been so hard ever since you have. I don’t know what I’ve done to myself. How I’ve let the years slip away. I should have told you then. What I’ve thought ever since. I loved you, Daniel Howell. Like I have never loved anything in this world.” His voice broke a little. “I loved you.” he repeated. Nothing moved. The room was silent, but the silence was heavy, weighted down and poised for something. He heard a solitary tap. And another. Far off and quiet at first, like a hesitant footstep in an empty building, but increasingly louder, it started to rain. Phil had just dried off after a long shower, and was sitting on his bed, fully dressed in pale blue jeans and a silvery-grey sweater. The rain, gently caressing the windowpanes and tiles, seemed to reinvigorate him, and he felt a sudden urge to feel the rain on his pale skin. Phil had always loved the rain. The gentle pinpricks of moisture accumulating over every surface. He’d taken it for granted in England, though he’d never been wholly sick of it. Here, in his house in Australia, it was a rare treasure, something that sometimes never happened for entire seasons. Phil rolled up the ends of his jeans, stood and walked out to his balcony looking out across the lake. Yes, it was the same lake. He preferred it here though, close to where he knew Dan was, somewhere beneath the surface. Even the grief and the broken memories couldn’t keep him away from it.

Phil leant on the balcony, feeling the rough, grainy wood under his folded arms, and the sparkle of wetness on his unkempt black hair. The lake was usually quiet late at night, but tonight the patter of the rain gave it a restless air, and he could see small waves billowing on the muddy shore a few meters from his balcony. The movement of water, for him, was like a campfire or a good novel; he could spend hours gazing into it, completely absorbed and oblivious to the outside world.

But tonight it was different. He could feel it. It wasn’t just the water, there was a quiet energy to the air, that played on his nerves, and made his heart beat faster. Deep within the lake, there was a sudden shimmer of gold, bright and quick, like the tail of a goldfish disappearing into the depths of a pond. Phil’s heart caught in his throat. What… what was that? He felt strangely surreal. Perhaps this was one of the dreams he had been having recently. The dreams that gave him hope and light and took it all away when he woke. The unacknowledged reason for his insomnia. But no, there it was again. The flicker, a long, golden streak, stayed a little longer this time, grew that much closer to the surface, and suddenly Phil was scared of whatever it was. It wasn’t an animal. It wasn’t anything he’d seen before. Yet it seemed strangely alive, or living. Now, in a small area, less than a square meter, the lake started to glow, teeming with golden sparks, like a cloud of luminescent plankton. They bubbled and sparkled above the water, fizzing and dropping back in, but never going out. Phil stood entranced, tracing the patterns of the miraculous, unreal droplets of colour on the surface of the troubled lake. And the sparks started to go out.

Or seemed to. They flickered, the deeper ones, that he could still see with clarity, were blinking out, and then quickly coming back on, until he realised that they weren’t blinking out. They were being obscured. Something, a figure so black, so dark that he couldn’t make it out, was slowly rising from the bottom of the lake. His heart caught in his throat. Slowly, being turned and born up by the eddying upwards current of bubbles, It came on, until Phil could see a long figure, decidedly human, lying inert on the surface of the lake. Not moving at all. He kept staring. Fascinated, and terrified at the same time. And then it moved. It twitched a little, moving its arm. Stiffly, unnaturally. And then it turned its head, and from this distance, Phil couldn’t distinguish a face from its silhouette, but it was definitely looking right at him.

That broke the spell. He backed into the balcony door, nearly tripped over before recovering his balance, and went through. Bolting it shut. He didn’t wait to see more of whatever it was that was lying there watching him from the lake, but as he rushed to his bedroom, it seemed to move, getting slowly onto its feet in the edges of his peripheral vision. He opened his bedroom door, closed it fast behind him. He lay down on his bed, and pulled the sheets that he hadn’t used in days over himself, and turned his head to the pillow, covered his ears with his hands and tried to ignore the world and pretend he hadn’t seen what he had. It was a dream right. Wasn’t it. He’d almost managed to persuade himself that it had been a dream, that it couldn’t have been grounded in reality, when he heard his door open. There, in his doorway was a shadow. Blacker than the blackest night, it seemed to not have any texture, simply to be the negation of light, a blank space in the middle of its surroundings. But it was undeniably human. Slightly taller than Phil. And there was something… something familiar about the way it was standing. Something he still remembered about that way of standing, the slight forward tilt of the head, the shape of the body.

“Dan,” he whispered, and the sound nearly didn’t come out of his throat, nearly got stuck in the vacuum of silence around them. “Is that you?”

No sound, but something about the way that the figure was now standing seemed affirmative. Phil stood, looked carefully at him, the thing that seemed so much like Dan. It started to move toward him, reaching out with its shadowy arm in a searching gesture. Perhaps it couldn’t see. But it could surely. It had looked at him. Phil grew nervous as the arm stretched out further toward him, reaching for his chest, and then he sidestepped around it, and walked out the door, stopping himself from being cornered. “Dan, you’re going to have to give an explanation. Talk to me, Dan.” he said, his voice croaky and slightly dehydrated. “Dan, you don’t know what it’s been to me, for all of the years that you’ve been… gone. I can’t explain it. You’ll have to. Is this magic? What are you, what - what have you changed to?” Dan, if it was him, continued to move closer. “Dan, stop ok. Please, just stop, and talk ok, stop moving closer DAN it’s scaring me! What have you become?”He fell suddenly, and pain spiked through his back from the hardwood flooring.

His back was pressed hard against the glass sliding door leading out to his balcony. He pulled himself up, opened it and fell outside, just avoiding Dan’s cold arm, that left a tentacle of cold mist sliding through the air, half visible as a blueish vapour. They stood facing each other through the glass of the sliding door for  a long, tangible moment. Phil could almost hear his heart, and there were black spots sliding around the edge of his vision. He could feel the days of sleep he’d missed, the great weight of all that tiredness weighing him down. His breathing was loud, harsh. And what had once been Dan was staring at him through the glass. The black figure opposite him was still staring, with an inclined head, directly into his eyes. If it was Dan, if there was his mind somewhere, behind that absolute blackness, then it was very appropriate. “Very you.” he told the figure, thinking out loud, and then it reached through the glass, and was on the other side.

Phil backed away again, until he was touching the railing. He questioned if he would jump if he needed to. He was older than he had been, and he had never been athletic. Jumping might well kill him. But there was no need. The figure simply stretched out its hand again, beckoning, sadly, as if he wanted it to be taken, to be held by Phil. And then it spoke.

“Phil,” he said, and the voice was pure Daniel Howell, no doubt about it, although there was a far-off echo to it as if it came from above them both, somewhere far off in the rain. “I’m sorry for scaring you. It isn’t what I wanted, but it was hard… to control my body, my voice, after all of those years. I’ll explain it to you later, I promise. But now it’s time for you to go. Here, take my hand.”

“Go?” Phil asked, half curious, but still scared. “Wait - you mean death? It’s time for me to die?”

“Phil, you dingus,” Dan said, and there was a hollow amusement to his voice. “It’s not that bad. I’d know. You trust me, right? Do you still trust me?” he sounded nervous, like someone meeting an old friend, and that hint of human emotion, that curiosity and baffled anxiety that was so intrinsically Dan was all he needed. He stretched out his hand and grasped Dan’s firmly, held on tight to what felt like warm skin under a layer of impenetrable shadow.

In that instant, too short a period of time for Phil to have even thought, a change came over Dan. The shadow that covered his body streamed down from his head, and up from his waist, coiling like a nest of serpents down his arm and toward Phil. Before he could flinch away, however, the shadow started to evaporate, rising up in a steaming cold mist, slightly grey and blue, and falling away into the sky. Phil looked down, and saw Dan. But not Dan as he had imagined him, as he had remembered him. He was barefoot and bareheaded, with smooth white jeans and an unadorned white shirt, that were loose, yet seamlessly tight, flowing and almost melding with his skin. His skin, too was changed. It had a healthy pink glow to it, yet seemed to undulate, slowly, with a bluish tint, as though it were under the surface of a slow flowing river. His hair was long, untamed and more curled than usual, with a strong gold tint. Phil knew that colour. It was the colour of the lake, lit up like a candelabra with the sunrise each morning. The burnished gold colour of the lake on the morning that Dan had died. He didn’t look at all older, as if he was the same person he had been that night, though he had a depth, a wealth of solemnity and sadness and joy to his eyes that made them seem the eyes of an old, old man. They were still holding hands, and Phil looked at Dan, who had been staring straight at him, as if to soak in the sight. His eyes, brown, with streaks of colour, gold veins running through them, were wet, with tears or the soft, soft rain he couldn’t tell, and his face was set in a small smile, melancholy yet heartfelt.

“Phil, this might hurt.” he was saying, and he reached forward and lifted him up by the waist, effortlessly as though he was a small child. Phil felt a peculiar wrenching sensation, a rapid, chilling pain that engulfed him for a fraction of half of a second, and passed on, leaving behind a feeling of emptiness. He looked down, and saw that he was floating, an inch or two above the deck, and slightly above Dan’s head. And then his body hit the floor with a thud, and he didn’t. He was looking down at his body, from above it. Somehow, some part of it, seemed natural. It resonated with a hidden section of himself, a faint twinge of evanescent deja vu emerging from its hole in the recesses of his mind. Phil felt light, carefree. Better than he had in months. And he had changed, physically, as well. He looked down at his arms, saw a light blue, weightless shirt covering him. It felt - it felt like the physical manifestation of music. It caressed his skin, close to him and loose. His jeans were fashioned of the same material, loose and tight simultaneously, and a paler shade of blue, shivering in the moonlight as if indecisively coloured. He turned to Dan, who was staring intently at him, fascinated with his transformation.

“Can you see me?” he asked. “Am I a ghost? Actually dead?”

“I can see you, Phil,” Dan said, reaching out his hand for him to take. “Still as beautiful as you were. You’ve improved with age, if anything.”

Phil leant forward, still floating inches above the floor. At first, his movement was slow, cautious, as he struggled to get his mind past the idea that he was, in fact flying. And then he was moving forward a little more confidently, and reaching for Dan’s hand again, grasping it, feeling the solid warmth. Dan was grinning, watching him. “You’ll get better with practice.” he promised, and pushed off the hardwood floor, pulling Phil into the night sky. They shot up hundreds of feet, flying rapidly, and Phil kept his eyes on Dan, and watched the background grow larger around him, rolling hills and eucalypts blending into large green blur of forest that grew slowly indistinct. They stopped, and Dan let go of his hand. Phil fell, twisting around, and then his panic overtook him, and by instinct, he willed the air around him to cushion him, and he was lying, motionless, fifty metres at least above the ground. Dan dropped, stopped, and walked over to him, stepping lightly on air.

“Dan” Phil said, looking at him, and

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to let go of you again.” Dan replied, and held his hand. Phil clasped Dan to him, and they held each other in the air, motionless, until Phil felt movement under his hands. Quickly, like tendrils of flame, two wings were erupting from Dan’s back, ripping gently through his shirt, which rippled, and grew back, covering up the seams with patches of icy white fabric. The wings were large, and pure gold, made up of thousands upon thousands of metallic feathers glinting and shadowed and burnished in the clear and pale moonlight. Dan stood amazed, and his brow wrinkled, and he moved them slightly, brought them up, and then in a great sweep downwards, and he was pulling Phil up into the aching chasm of empty night above them for the second time in as many minutes. Phil felt a strange pulling sensation in his back, and his bones were stretching, but pleasantly, as if they were releasing pent up tension from his spine. His wings spilled out from his sides, and he looked over his shoulder admiring them. They were sky-blue, freckled with white patches, and black bands at the end, like the new plumage of a bluebird. Dan looked at him, wonder in his eyes and Phil grinned helplessly back, elated with motion, and touch and feeling, and this time it was his turn to pull Dan, and they were streaking like comets toward the horizon.  They levelled out, and flew down, hand in hand, following a dirt track through the bush, skimming metres above the treetops, eyes on each other, as the slow beat of their wings rustled a metronome beat through the silent bush.

They flew on, over small houses, and towns, lit up faintly with small yellow lights, oblivious to what passed above them. They swooped over power lines, through tendrils of smoke dribbling from chimneys and dying campfires, exulted in their freedom. Past larger towns, longer roads. Late night drivers immersed in coffee and concentrating on the white fluorescent lines lit up in their headlights, never giving any thought to the brief shadows that flitted overhead. Larger and larger towns, suburbs and traffic, and a small child in her backyard saw them and learnt to dream. And then they were pulling up, going higher and higher, over the city, the harbour and the distant skyscrapers. Phil looked down, and they shot through a patch of cloud, and the city was lost to his vision. They were up high now, still travelling incredibly, terrifyingly fast. He looked at Dan, saw his face wreathed in a smile of fierce happiness, hair streaming back down in the wind. Squeezed his hand firmly, and felt an acknowledging pressure, a glance. The air was starting to thin out, and grow colder, but their breaths grew deeper, more purposeful, and their lungs seemed to expand with the space, the boundless air around them. They travelled on this way, through the night, always looking upwards, until the moon had moved around, and the sun was on its way up, lighting the sky around them. The flew, for hours upon hours, until they’d stopped seeing aircraft, or clouds even, just the blank palette of atmosphere, and then they were above that - flying upwards for days and nights and days again until they couldn’t tell the difference.

They looked out upon the breadth of the cosmos, and infinity of indigo interrupted by spirals and clouds of silver, black, red, blue. They kissed up there, on the top of the world, and nobody saw them. Time passed, and nobody remembered them any longer, their memory died out with the remains of their physical selves. And their eyes looked out on the universe, and the colours of infinity were reflected in their eyes.

“Sixty-nine.” said Dan, and they both giggled.


End file.
